


Always My Sister

by BonitaBreezy



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gary being a dick, M/M, canon typical mentions of suicide, mentions of depression therapy ptsd etc, sibling relationships, story told in scenes stretched over time, unauthorized field trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:58:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren and Jem work on what it means to be brother and sister again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always My Sister

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by this picture from Harriet Cains' Instagram: https://40.media.tumblr.com/dc41732f4b48d28ff0467db7f41d6f75/tumblr_n0htl4m37r1slwvjto1_500.jpg
> 
> Clearly it got vastly out of my control.

Kieren opened the door to find Jem standing there, crying.  She cried quietly, her shoulders hunched with her hands wrapped around her middle like she was trying to hold herself together.  Her make-up was running in dark black smears around her eyes, and her lower lip trembled every time she took a gasping breath.

“God, Kier,” she snapped when she saw him standing there.  Her back straightened out and she immediately started to wipe her eyes. “Don’t you ever knock?”

“I’m sorry,” he offered, wishing he knew what to do or say.  Before, when he’d still been alive and Jem had still been just a kid who adored her older brother, when everything had been much more simple, he’d always known how to cheer her up.

Things were different now.  Jem had been forced to grow up way too fast in a very vicious and cruel world, and the consequences of that were tearing her apart on the inside.  She’d started going to a therapist a few weeks before, but the session always seemed to leave her completely drained or in a bad mood.

“Well, what do you want?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I was going to go for a walk, but I couldn’t find my headphones so I thought I’d borrow yours,” Kieren explained awkwardly.

“Without asking me?” she demanded, and Kieren shrugged. “Ugh.  Fine, take them.”  She snatched her bright green ear buds off her desk and thrust them at him.

“Well, um,” Kieren said, not taking them from her. “Would you like to come with me?”

She stared at him for a long minute, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Why?” she asked.

“We haven’t...really talked in a while,” Kieren said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “I thought it might be nice.  And if you’re with me, Dad won’t make you watch his newest blu ray in an awkward attempt to cheer you up.”

Jem blinked at him slowly and then sighed and tossed the headphones back on the desk. “All right, let’s go.  Give me a minute to get ready.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Kieren promised.

When Jem came downstairs five minutes later, she looked like she’d never been crying at all.  Her hair was brushed back into a ponytail and her eyeliner was freshly applied.  She was wearing a drab green cargo jacket reminiscent of her HVF days and sturdy boots for walking in the woods.

“Well, come on then,” she said impatiently, and Kieren pushed himself up on off the couch with a bit of difficulty.  Since he’d come back, his one knee was a bit stiff, though he wasn’t really sure why.  It made it just a bit harder to get up and down, or to walk quickly, but he dealt with it the best he could.

The front door swung open and their parents came in before they could escape.  Kieren could see the stack of movies inside the plastic bag hanging from his father’s hand.

“Ah, hello!” he greeted them, looking surprised to see them both at the same time. “How was your, er, meeting, Jem?”  He always called Jem’s therapy sessions meetings, because if there was anything the Walker family excelled at it was avoiding uncomfortable conversations.  Still, Kieren thought that the fact that he asked at all showed a little bit of growth.

“It was fine, dad,” Jem answered quickly, her snotty annoyed teenager voice firmly in place. “Kier and I were just going for a walk.  We’ll see you later!” She slipped past their parents and out the door, and Kieren rushed to follow for fear of being made to feel guilty for how much he’d been avoiding them since everything had happened with Maxine Martin.

“I got _Clue_ on blu ray!” Steve insisted, gesturing at them with the bag of movies clenched in his fist.

“Maybe later!” Kieren called over his shoulder as he hustled to catch up with Jem.  Once they were around the corner she slowed down and sighed heavily.

“How was your meeting Jemima? Did you enjoy your very professional and not at all awkward or uncomfortable talk with the head shrinker?” she said sarcastically, her voice pitched low to imitate their father.

“The denial is strong with this one,” Kieren agreed, and Jem cracked a quick smile. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it all, sometimes.”

They crossed quickly through the village, taking back streets to avoid running into anyone like Gary, who they’d both been avoiding like the plague, or any of the ULA members who tended to spit at Kieren when they saw him.  Apparently they felt that he was to be blamed for Simon’s defection.  Perhaps he was.

“Me neither,” Jem admitted quietly. “I don’t really want to talk with them about therapy, because it’s so obvious that they don’t want to think about it.  They just pay the bills and pretend it’s not happening.”

“And it makes you feel as if you’ve done something terrible.  I know,” Kieren commiserated.  He was still treading a narrow line with his parents in his refusal to wear cover-up or contacts, and in refusing to pretend to eat dinner.  They tried really hard to pretend like everything was exactly the same despite his lack of cooperation, even though it clearly wasn’t.

“Like you’ve got to be this perfect little imitation of what they remember from Before,” she said, shaking her head and making her ponytail sway wildly. “Like we’re just supposed to pretend that...that…”

“That I didn’t kill myself,” Kieren finished for her, and she nodded.

“And that you didn’t come back a monster,” she whispered. “That I didn’t almost have to shoot you in the head, and that I couldn’t, even though I killed dozens of other rabids before.  And they could have all come back like you did, gone home to their families and been real people again, except I killed them and felt like a god damned hero while I did it.”

Her face was crumpling again, like she was going to cry, and Kieren was grateful that they’d finally reached the woods so he could lead her in away from where any people might wander by.  She wouldn’t appreciate appearing weak in front of people, especially after what had happened with the blue oblivion at college.

“Jem, I can’t say that I enjoyed hearing about your hunting parties.  Obviously,” Kieren said and Jem cracked a weak smile at the memory of his breakdown at dinner. “I can’t even say that you shouldn’t feel guilty, because that won’t help anything.  But I can say that, if you had shot me, I wouldn’t have blamed you.  And I also don’t blame you for not being able to.  You’ve had to make a lot of quick decisions in terrible circumstances, and you did what you thought was best at the time.”

“That doesn’t make it right, Kier.” She seemed to have regained some control over herself again, and no longer looked on the verge of tears, but her voice was still small and weak.

“You couldn’t have known at the time that Neurotriptyline was going to be created,” Kieren reminded her gently. “We were rabid, we were killers, and you did what you had to do to protect yourself, and to protect mum and dad.  I’ll never blame you for that.”

Jem turned away from him and approached a tree, scraping some of the loose bark off near the bottom with the toe of her boot so that she had something to do to avoid looking at him.

“I didn’t do it out of some noble cause to protect humanity,” she said bitterly. “I did it because I was terrified.  I was so afraid and I wanted to feel powerful.  Having a gun in my hand made me feel like I had the power, and I just got lost in that feeling.  And then after, when you came home…”

“It was a little harder to feel like a hero,” Kieren answered for her, and she nodded, tipping her head back to look up at the canopy of trees above them.

“I thought, maybe, that it was all a lie.  That you were something else, some sort of monster wearing my sweet brother’s face.  I couldn’t even look at you without remembering the shop.”  They both shuddered at the memory, but Jem pushed on. “But then I talked to you, and you were just the same as I remembered.  And it got me thinking that if you were the same, then all the others were the same too.  People I’d seen around town, people’s mums and dads and brothers and sisters.  People who I’d killed.  And I didn’t want to feel so awful about something I used to feel so proud of, so I just kept pretending that it was all the same.  But then the nightmares started.”

Jem kicked the tree, hard, and then turned to press her back to it.  She stared at him challengingly, like she thought he might laugh at her for having nightmares.

“Sometimes I see your eyes and I get so scared I can’t breathe.  I just feel so scared all the time, Kier.  Scared and guilty and angry and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

“I’m afraid I’m not the best person to ask for advice on that front,” Kieren said, shrugging apologetically. He didn’t say anything about his eyes because there was nothing he could say.  He wasn’t going to go back to hiding.  “When I got overwhelmed by fear and sadness and anger I decided to die rather than deal with it.  I thought it would be the easy way out, but you can see how well that turned out.  But you’re stronger than I was, Jem.  I...I didn’t handle it well, and maybe if I’d been a little stronger I would have been able to force myself to keep going, but I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be, because it just didn’t seem worth the trouble.  But you’re going to therapy, and looking your fears and regrets in the face.  I think that’s really brave.”

“I don’t feel very brave.” Her voice cracked.

Kieren smiled sadly at her. “I don’t think brave people ever do.”

* * *

 

After their talk in the woods, Jem and Kieren had seemed to reach a sort of understanding.  There was a dark history between them that neither of them could control or change, but there was also forgiveness and love and understanding.  Kieren wasn’t sure they’d ever been so close before, even before the Rising.  It felt like they were a unit, and that they could depend on each other when their parents just didn’t understand.  It was nice.

A few weeks later, Kieren was lying squished onto his tiny twin bed with his cheek on Simon’s shoulder, exhausted from a day of “giving back”.  They’d been picking up trash on the side of the highway today, and he was growing more and more frustrated with the glorified slave labor.

“It’s not as if I can just stop going,” he sighed. “You may be fine with rebelling, but Gary’s actually scared of you, isn’t he?  He’s not going to do anything to you.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of that idiot,” Simon responded, tensing up at the thought of him.

“Well, not afraid, exactly,” Kieren said, a bit offended at Simon’s blase dismissal. He still remembered the frantic terror rushing through his brain when he realized that Gary was going to force him to go rabid. “But I do happen to know from experience that he can overpower me.  It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement in my favor, is it?”

“If you don’t want to go, don’t go,” Simon said, like it was just that simple. “I’ll handle Gary.”

“Well, yeah, and when he marks me down as non-compliant and I get dragged back to Norfolk are you gonna deal with them, too?”

“You’re not going back to Norfolk,” Simon said firmly.  He wrapped his arm around Kieren’s middle and held him closer, like maybe he thought that Kieren would disappear just by invoking the name.

“Right.  Because I’m going to keep picking up trash off the side of the road like a good little PDS sufferer,” Kieren responded. “It’s not always as easy as just raging against the machine you, know.”

“Can we not fight?” Simon said suddenly. “I don’t want to fight tonight.”

“Well, I wasn’t looking for a fight, I was just looking to complain a little.  But yeah, let’s talk about something else.”

They were quiet for a couple of minutes until Simon said, “How’s Jem?”

“Getting better, a little bit at a time.  She’s stopped coming back from every session in a foul mood.  I don’t really know what they talk about in there, but apparently it’s starting to work.  She looks me in the eyes, now, every once in a while.  Said it’s called exposure therapy.”

“Exposing herself to what she fears?” Simon asked.  He looked a little troubled by that, and Kieren understood.  Just because he wasn’t the Twelfth Disciple anymore didn’t mean he’d thrown away all of his beliefs.  He generally didn’t think well of people who thought that they should stay hidden under make-up and lenses.

“I think so.  Not that she fears _me_ , exactly, but…”

“But our eyes are very specific to the Undead,” Simon said. “I get it.”

“Yeah.  I don’t mind, even though I don’t like it when she flinches away from me.  I’d like to help her any way I can.”

Whatever Simon was about to say was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door.

“C’mon in!” he called, and Jem opened the door, pausing when she saw that he wasn’t alone.

“Ah, hi, Simon.  Didn’t know you were here,” she said, tapping her fingers against the thick book she held in her hand.

“Hello, Jem,” Simon greeted, ever calm in the face of her nervous energy.

“Sorry, I’ll go…” Jem started, and Kieren sat up quickly.  He didn’t want to make her feel isolated just because his boyfriend was around.

“No, stay,” he urged. “Is it book time?”

“Yeah,” Jem said, shrugging like it wasn’t a big deal. “But we can skip today.”

“No we can’t,” Kieren insisted. “Sit.”

Jem rolled her eyes fondly and grabbed his desk chair, wheeling it over so it sat at the edge of his bed.  She sat and pulled her legs up onto the seat, crossing them under her.

“What’s book time?” Simon asked.  His eyebrows lifted just the slightest bit, like he’d missed out on some mass announcement and felt a bit dumb for having to ask.

“It’s kinda dumb,” Jem said quickly.

“It’s not dumb!” Kieren insisted, even though he knew how much stock Jem put in how other people viewed her.  Reading with your big-little brother probably didn’t do much for the stone-cold badass vibe she generally went for.

“We just read a couple chapters out loud to each other every night until we finish a book,” Kieren explained to Simon. “I used to read to Jem when we were kids, so we thought we might do that again.”

“Except that I’m older now, so I get to read too,” Jem added.

“I see,” Simon said. “I’ll go then.  I don’t want to interrupt your time together.”

“But you’ve only just got here!” Kieren protested.  Simon hadn’t been by much that week because he’d been trying to sort out what to do with himself now that he wasn’t allied with the Undead Prophet.  Kieren wasn’t actually sure what he had been doing, but if figured if it were important then he would find out about it soon enough.  This was the first time Kieren had seen him in five days, and he’d been hoping that Simon might spend the night.

“Well, yeah, but I’ll come back ‘round tomorrow,” Simon promised.

“No, stay,” Jem spoke up.  Kieren shot her a grateful look and she pretended not to see it. “It’s not like we can’t read with you here.  But if you’re gonna stay you have to read.”

Simon glanced at Jem and then looked to Kieren, who put on his very best pleading face.  He’d been reliably informed that his “big doe eyes” made him almost impossible to deny, and he used that to his advantage with Simon whenever he could.  There was no reason he couldn’t spend time with both of them, after all.

“All right, all right,” he sighed, settling back down on the bed. “Such a hardship.”  He smiled slyly at Kieren, and Kieren could feel himself smiling back involuntarily.

“All right, well,” Jem said loudly. “If you two are done staring into each other’s eyes, we’ve got a book to read.  Simon, you’re the guest, start us off.”  She passed the book over to him and he cracked a small smile at the cover before flipping to the page where the bookmark was stuck.  He scanned the page for a second and then cleared his throat just slightly before he started to read.

_“Harry didn't have a very clear idea of how he had managed to get back into the Honeydukes cellar, through the tunnel, and into the castle once more. All he knew was that the return trip seemed to take no time at all…”_

* * *

 

“Oi Kier!”

Kieren almost jumped out of his skin at the shout, cussing softly when he realized that he’d dragged his pencil in a jagged line across the drawing of his mother he was working on.  It was just a bit of light line art at the moment, so it wouldn’t be so hard to redo, but it was still a bit annoying.

He tossed his drawing pencil down on the desk and opened his bedroom door, almost walking straight into Jem who had a fist raised to knock.

“You hollered?” he asked in the most pleasant voice he could muster, and she scoffed at him.

“Mum wants us to pick up some stuff from the shop.”  Kieren sincerely doubted that Sue had asked for them both to go, but he knew how much Jem hated going there.  Kieren didn’t have the best memories of it either, but he found it easier to handle facing what he’d done than she did.  It wasn’t that he didn’t feel guilty about it, but more that he felt somewhat separated from it.  He only remembered it in flashbacks, after all.

“Yeah, all right.” He slipped into his boots and followed after her to go collect the list and some money from their mother.  She looked pleased that they were going together, as if she hadn’t noticed that they’d become very close again in the past few months.  The list was rather short, likely just a few ingredients she needed for dinner, but she gave them twenty quid, and Kieren could already see the mischievous glint in Jem’s eye.

“So what are you plotting little-big sister?” he asked when they were out on the street.  

“Ice cream.” She spoke as if it were a matter of utmost seriousness.  Maria says that I’ve been doing well and that I should be proud of myself.  So ice cream.”

Maria was her therapist, and she was often giving Jem tasks to do for different ways to cope.  She was always very supportive of positive reinforcement and celebrating milestones.  She was doing a lot of good for Jem, and sometimes Kieren wondered how different things would be if he had chosen to see someone about his depression rather than letting it consume him.  Maybe it would all be the same, but maybe not.  Either way, there was no changing it now.

“I always find ice cream to be the best form of self-love,” Kieren told her mock-seriously. “Or at least, I used to.”

“Well, yeah,” Jem said nonchalantly. “Now that you’ve got Simon there’s no need for self-love is there?”

He gaped at her for a second until she waggled her eyebrows at him, and then he hip-checked her.  She stumbled a couple steps to the side, laughing at her own joke the whole way.

“You’re terrible,” Kieren informed her.

“Well maybe I am,” she acknowledged easily, which made him immediately suspicious.  When she continued his suspicions were confirmed. “But is _Simon_?” She dragged his name out in a sing-song way and then cackled madly when Kieren shoved her again.

“Dick!” he said, just barely not laughing himself when Jem started cackling even louder.  It might not have been the most aptly chosen insult, all things considered.  He let her go for at least a full minute before rolling his eyes.

“Okay, enough, you’re hilarious.”

Jem wiped a few tears from her eyes and got herself under control.

“I know I am.  But how are things with Simon anyway?  Haven’t seen him around much lately.”  She asked him casually, pretending that she wasn’t watching out of the corner of her eyes.

“Things are fine,” Kieren shrugged, trying to seem just as casual.  It was one thing to crack stupid jokes, but another thing entirely to actually discuss his relationship with his sister.  He wasn’t opposed to it, exactly, but it was still a bit weird. “We mostly hang around the Bungalow, you know?  Less, uh…”

“Less Mum and Dad,” Jem said knowingly.

“Exactly,” Kieren sighed. “I know they’re trying to show that they’re being supportive and all because they still feel bad about almost sending me back to Norfolk, but there’s just something about the way they hover whenever he’s over.  Sometimes I just want to snog my boyfriend without the threat of family walking in.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Jem said, bobbing her head in a nod. “I think they’re very curious about him, because they really hardly ever see him before you drag him off up to your room, or back out the door to be anywhere else.  Maybe if you give them a chance to talk to him a bit they’ll back off?”  She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Yeah, maybe.  Though I do keep them separate because I honestly can’t trust any of them to behave.  We’ve got dad’s awkward blundering and mum pretending like everything’s completely fine all the time so as not to rock the boat, and then there’s Simon who can hardly get through an entire conversation without bringing up PDS rights.  It’s a volatile combination.”

Jem furrowed her eyebrows at him, like she didn’t quite believe what he was saying.  He wasn’t really exaggerating, though.  Simon was very dedicated to his cause, and Kieren understood it because he was right.  They were horribly oppressed, and it needed to be changed, but every once in a while he just wanted to talk about stupid things like what was on the telly instead of politics.  They did have normal conversations, of course, but Simon often had to be steered there.

“You can’t tell me he doesn’t have any other hobbies than standing around chanting in graveyards.”  Kieren was kind of surprised about the joke.  The day of the failed Second Rising was something else she didn’t really like talking about.  Seeing him Rabid again had given her new and more horrible nightmares for weeks.

“Well,” he said, thinking.  Simon had spent a lot of time lately reading his bible, like he was hoping he’d find something new in the words he knew by heart. “He likes poetry.  And he did find one of those fancy Nikon digital cameras in Amy’s bungalow a few weeks ago that he’s been messing around with.  I can’t tell you how many pictures he’s taken of me lately.  I’m trying to convince him that he’d rather take pictures of nature or something, but he keeps turning the damn thing on me.”

“Hmm, well, I don’t know that he could make a conversation with them about either of those,” Jem said with a thoughtful frown. “You should probably just start forcing them to watch movies together.  Dad won’t shut up the whole time and they’ll feel satisfied even though Simon didn’t get a word in.”

Kieren nodded consideringly as they entered the shop.  Jem scanned the list, frowning at it a bit as she read, and then looked up at him.

“Divide and conquer,” she said seriously. “You get the flour and the baking soda, and I’ll get the eggs, milk and ice cream.” She didn’t give him a chance to protest before she was turning on her heel and striding away, her ponytail swishing wildly behind her.  He knew it was because the baking aisle was too close to where they kept the cider.

He tried not to think about Lisa Lancaster as he passed The Spot, but it proved to be impossible.  Perhaps it was better that he couldn’t help himself.  Better that he had to remember her then just doing his best to put it behind him and pretend it hadn’t happened.  He ducked into the correct aisle and grabbed a bag of flour, hoping that just plain all-purpose would do.  A few feet down was a small box of baking soda, and he snagged one and turned on his heel to leave the aisle and go join Jem.  Just because that area didn’t affect him as much didn’t mean he wanted to be there.  He came out of the aisle, and just as he was walking past The Spot, he walked straight in to Gary Kendal, who was definitely the last person he wanted to see.

“Watch it, Rotter,” Gary spat, shoving Kieren back.  Kieren heaved a heavy sigh, really not willing to get into it in the middle of the shop, but also completely done with Gary’s bullshit.

“Gary, what a pleasure,” he said sarcastically. “I really must be going.”  When Kieren tried to step around him, Gary moved to block his path, sneering angrily.  Kieren and Gary had never been friends, because Gary was a Class A dick, but it had gotten much worse since the Rising.  He wasn’t sure if Gary focused his hate specifically at Kieren or if treated all of them like shit, but he did know that he was sick of it.

“Shove off, Gary,” he said, putting a little more force behind his voice.  He supposed it was too much to ask for Gary to have any sort of repercussions for forcing Blue Oblivion into his system.  After all, it was his word against Gary’s, and most people seemed more inclined to side with a member of the former HVF.

“You can’t be walking around looking like that,” Gary told him, and it was suddenly clear that he was extremely drunk. “It’s disgusting, and we shouldn’t have to see your rotting face!” Gary was yelling now, and people were starting to look.  Kieren was trying his best to look assaulted, keeping his hands to himself and making sure to stay out of Gary’s reach.  He didn’t want anyone to accuse him of getting violent, but people would see what they wanted to.

“Then stay inside!” Kieren snapped.  He wished that Simon was there.  Not that he needed his boyfriend to fight his battles for him, but Gary usually hesitated to mess with him when Simon was around.  Clearly the memory of that night at the Legion had stuck with him.  Now, however, Simon was not here, and Gary felt perfectly at ease grabbing Kieren around the neck and shoving him up against the end cap of the nearest row of shelves.  

Considering Kieren didn’t need to breathe,and couldn’t even feel the pain of being slammed into the hard metal, it wasn’t all that threatening.  It still pissed him off, though.  It especially pissed him off because no one in the store was making any moves to intervene, or even protest.  All they saw when they looked at Kieren was a Rotter, and it made his blood boil.  

“Let him _go_ , Gary!” Jem shouted from a few aisles down.  Apparently she’d heard Gary yelling and made the right connections.  She headed towards them at a brisk pace, her eyes flashing angrily.  When Gary didn’t let go, she raised the jug of milk she held in her hand and whacked him on the head with it.  It wasn’t a Colt, but it certainly jarred Gary enough to get him to let Kieren go.

Jem pushed her way between them and got up in Gary’s face, her eyes blazing.  Kieren very briefly considered protesting that he could handle it, but then decided to just let it go.  He was actually kind of touched about how viciously she’d come to his rescue.  He wasn’t entirely sure that she would have six months ago.

“If you put your hands on my brother again, I will cut them off and feed them to you, you hear me?” she growled.  Gary looked conflicted for a moment, like he was considering pushing past Jem and going at Kieren again, but finally he looked away from her, scoffed, and left.

“Ugh,” Jem grumbled as she watched him leave with narrowed eyes. “What a jerk.  You okay, big-little brother?”

“I’m fine,” Kieren assured her. “He can’t hurt me.”

“Doesn’t give him a right to be such a massive dick,” Jem said darkly, and Kieren couldn’t help but agree.

“Let’s go get your ice cream, yeah?” Kieren prodded, and Jem nodded, though she was clearly reluctant about it.  As they walked towards the dairy section, it occurred to Kieren that Jem hadn’t just come to his defense.  She’d voluntarily walked right into the exact spot in Roarton that triggered her the most.  For him.  She hadn’t even flinched.

* * *

 

It was so early it was still dark out when Kieren knocked loudly on Jem’s door and then let himself into her room.  She’d been sleeping much better in the last few weeks, so he didn’t feel guilty about waking her.  Anyway, he knew she would appreciate it later.

“I’m going to put you back in the ground,” Jem grumbled, yanking her pillow over her face.

“C’mon, Jem, get up,” Kieren said, flipping on the overhead light and approaching the bed to shake her exposed foot.  She kicked at him with it, but he jumped back out of the way before it connected.

“Seriously, Kier, fuck off,” she said.  She turned away from him and caught sight of her alarm clock. “It’s...it’s five am!  What is wrong with you?”

“We are going on a trip,” Kieren informed her, feeling just a bit gleeful at her unimpressed expression. “Get up, get dressed, pack for overnight.”

“What are you even on about?” Jem demanded.

“Do as I say, little-big sister.  I have to go help Simon.”  He flounced out the door and then paused in the hallway to make sure that she was getting out of bed.  He heard her grumbling darkly under her breath, but the bed squeaked and he heard her walking about, so he continued on down the hall where Simon was glaring at himself in the mirror with his face partly made-up.

“I hate this stuff,” he complained when he saw that Kieren had returned.

“I know,” Kieren said, taking the make-up sponge from him and starting to apply the cover up more carefully.  He’d actually gotten pretty decent at it, before he’d stopped wearing it entirely.  He’d never say that he was a professional or anything, but he did manage to make them both look a little more alive without it being completely obvious that they were covering up. “It’s only for a little bit, though.  You know we have to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Simon grumbled.  He did hold still while Kieren worked on him, though, even if he pouted about it. When he finished, he kissed Simon’s cheek and then handed him a spare pair of lenses.  Simon’s grumbling immediately continued as he started attempting to poke one of the little discs into his eye.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Jem demanded from the hallway.  She’d pulled on a pair of burgundy skinny jeans and a Ramones t-shirt, but she still looked tired and vaguely murderous.

“Conforming,” Simon grumbled, and Kieren rolled his eyes.  This whole plan had been his idea in the first place.

“I told you, we’re going on a trip.  But no one is going to let a pair of PDS sufferers on a train, so we’ve got to play the part for a little bit.”

“Right,” Jem said slowly, looking at them like they were both completely mental. “And where are we going, exactly?”

Kieren glanced at Simon to silently ask if he should tell, but Simon was still cursing and trying to get the first lens in, so Kieren made an executive decision.

“We are going to London,” he declared.  Jem stared at him for a long moment, processing, and then her face lit up in a grin.

“Are we really?” she demanded.

“Oh yes,” Kieren said dramatically, pleased by her reaction. “There’s something very wrong about us never having been before.  What kind British citizens are we?  Or, formerly British citizens, I suppose.”

They hadn’t done much travelling growing up.  Whether their parents just couldn’t afford it or didn’t want to put in that much effort, he didn’t really know. The furthest south they’d even been was Nottingham, which was very firmly in the Midlands.  London was a place that Kieren had always wanted to go, and he used to tell Jem about all the things they’d do there when he had an apartment and she came to visit.  Obviously things had not worked out that way, but that didn’t mean they still couldn’t do some of those things they’d talked about, though.

“Kier this is great!” Jem squealed, though she would most definitely deny ever having made a noise like that later. “I’ve got to pack!”

She practically skipped skipped out of the bathroom and back down the hall to her bedroom.  Any evidence that she’d practically been a, ahem, zombie a few minutes before was completely gone.  Kieren turned to put in his own pair of lenses, slipping them both in quickly and easily.  Simon stared at him incredulously for a long moment, one lens in and one out, and then rolled his eyes and focused on getting the other one in.  He let out a victorious little noise when the second one stuck to his eye and didn’t immediately fall out again when he blinked.

It was surreal looking at Simon with mousse on and lenses in, even though he’d seen it once before.  When they’d first met, Kieren had found the intense focus of his pale eyes unnerving, but now he found it almost comforting in a way.  Something about that look was retracted by coloring his eyes brown.

“Look at us,” Kieren said cheerfully, lifting Simon’s arm up over his shoulders and leaning into his side. It left them pressed together, staring into the mirror. “We certainly do pass for Living, don’t we?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Simon said, his lip curling just slightly at the thought.  They really did look Living, if no one bothered to look too closely and notice that their skin had no color variation, or that their eyes were the exact same color because the lenses weren’t designed to be unique to the wearer, just colored.  Even if they had been, Simon was borrowing an extra pair of Kieren’s anyway.

“Were your eyes brown?” Kieren asked as he looked at them.  He couldn’t really imagine Simon with anything other than the white irises that marked them for what they were, but it wasn’t very likely that they’d always looked that way.

“Blue,” Simon answered, frowning at his reflection, his head tilted just slightly to the side.

“I bet they were nice,” Kieren said.  Simon scoffed quietly. “But I think I like them best just as they are.  No lenses.  You don’t look like you without your eyes being proper.”

Simon seemed pleased to hear this, and he leaned down and kissed Kieren soundly in response, or maybe as a reward for rejecting the Living’s view of “proper”.  Either way, Kieren was definitely on board with kissing.

“All right, all right, if you’re going to snog go do it in your room.  I’ve got to clean my teeth,” Jem said, shooing them out of the bathroom.  Simon seemed content to just keep snogging in Kieren’s room as suggested, but Kieren laughed and gently pushed him away.

“Sorry, I just want to double check and make sure we’ve got everything,” he said.  Simon looked put out, but only a bit.  He went to sit on the edge of Kieren’s bed while Kieren sorted through the packed bag they were sharing.  Everything was in there, including the reservation confirmation for the PDS friendly hotel he’d found online.

“Are you completely and totally sure you’ve got everything?” Simon asked dryly when he zipped the bag back up.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Kieren said, rolling his eyes. “It doesn’t hurt to be thorough, you know.”

“Thorough is packing the bag two days ago and then checking five times that you’ve got everything between then and now?” Simon asked.

“Shut up,” Kieren retorted.

They bickered and teased lightly until Jem appeared in the doorway, her hair in a half ponytail and her makeup done.  She had pulled out her black leather jacket for the occasion and had a thick knitted gray scarf wound around her neck.  The overnight bag slung over her shoulder was more like a large purse, but he supposed if it worked for her than that was her business.

“We ready then?” she asked, looking at them both expectantly.

“Yes,” Kieren said, at the same time Simon said, “Wait.”

They both looked at him, and Kieren was torn between exasperation and fondness as Simon picked up his camera.  If there was one thing that Kieren knew for sure about Simon, it was that he had an addictive personality.  He was always addicted to something, whether it was heroin or the ULA or, now, photography.  Kieren supposed, given the dangers of his previous addictions, that photography was a pretty good one to be on.

“Get together,” he told them, fiddling with the lens for a moment with the camera raised to his eye.  Jem turned a bit sideways and struck a pose with her hands on her hips, and Kieren leaned in and put his face next to hers. “Smile, Kieren, for god’s sake,” Simon growled, and Kieren couldn’t help but do just that.

The flash left him blinking and rubbing carefully at his eyes so that he wouldn’t disrupt his lenses.  He’d lost one behind his eye once, and it had taken a few hours to get it back out again.  Jem had already seized the camera from Simon’s hands to inspect the picture.

“Oh, this is good,” she said. “I look great in this.  Kieren, look.”  It was a nice picture, and Kieren told them so.

“Okay, so are we ready now?” he asked. “We’re going to miss the train.”

“Yes, all right, let’s go,” Simon said, zipping the camera back into it’s case and tucking the whole thing into his pocket.

“So, Jem,” Kieren said as they headed out the door. “To make this work, we’re going to need to be a bit tricky.”

* * *

 

Kieren could see their train coming down the tracks, and he glanced over to the ticket booth where Jem was smiling and chatting cheerfully with the ticket salesman.  She nodded a few times, and then took the tickets and a receipt before hurrying over to them.

“I don’t think he really looked at you,” she said when she got close.  The train rushed past them, but it was slowing down for the station. “He wouldn’t recognize you from over there anyway.” She sounded confident about that, but as soon as the train came to a complete stop she was ushering them onboard.  They chose a set of seats that faced each other and stashed their bags in the overhead compartment.  Kieren was thrumming with nervous energy as they sat down, half convinced that someone was going to call them out and kick them off the train.

“I can practically feel you vibrating, love,” Simon murmured to him quietly.  Kieren tried to stop looking so suspiciously nervous and focused on Jem, who was rolling her eyes at him.

“You’re such a good boy, Kier,” she said mockingly. “You never do anything you’re not supposed to, do you?”

He raised both eyebrows at her. “You know that isn’t true.”  They wouldn’t be here at all if that were true, but he didn’t suppose reminding her of his suicide was how they wanted to start their trip.

“Well, she is kinda right,” Simon spoke up. “You are very much about toeing the line until you have no other option.”

“Just because I don’t want to cause havoc where it’s undue…” Kieren started.

“You don’t want to rock the boat because you’re a good little mild-mannered English boy,” Simon teased.

“I’m sorry, do you want to go sit over there with her?” Kieren asked, narrowing his eyes.  Simon cracked a smile and shook his head.

“Not particularly, no.  But if you’ll notice we pulled out of the station and everything is just fine, isn’t it?”  Kieren looked out the window and realized that they’d already left Roarton behind.  Green hills were flashing by increasingly quickly as the train sped up.  They’d actually done.

“Huh,” he said. “I guess we did.”

“Well great, now that that bit’s over,” Jem said, slumping down into her seat. “It’s about five hours to London, and I’m going back to sleep.”  She leaned her head against the window and shut her eyes.

“You should try to sleep too, if you can,” SImon encouraged him.  It didn’t seem like such a bad idea, so Kieren rested his head against Simon’s shoulder and shut his eyes.  It didn’t take long for the motion of the train to lull him to sleep.

* * *

 

Their hotel was in Westminster, which made it a bit pricey, but since they were only staying one night Kieren figured it wasn’t so bad.  They got off the train in London-St. Pancras and transferred immediately to the Underground.  The map had actually been pretty simple once they figured it out, but they’d had to ask one of the attendants (a PDS sufferer in an orange Give Back Scheme bib) to explain it to them first.

The rush of the Underground was fast paced with people in and out, pressed close together to allow for the crush of bodies.  There were plenty of PDS sufferers commuting in the crush as well, some in bibs, some not, and most people didn’t look twice at the ones not wearing lenses or mousse.  Jem couldn’t stop chattering about anything and everything that she saw, and she even got a bit friendly with some American tourists along the ride.

“We’d do well here,” Simon said quietly to him at one point, nodding at a pair of au naturale PDS sufferers sat across from them.  “Melt right into the background.  It would be safer.”

Kieren shrugged noncommittally because he knew that Simon was right.  It would be safer.  But he knew that he couldn’t leave Roarton.  It would feel too much like running away.

“Now arriving at Westminster station,” the overhead speakers announced in cool voice, saving Kieren from having to answer. “Mind the gap.”

“This is us,” he said, standing up as the train glided to a stop.  There was a crush of activity as the doors opened and people tried to get on and others tried to get off, but they managed to mostly stay together and follow the flow of traffic and directional up towards the surface.  The first thing they saw when they came up was Big Ben.

“Well would you look at that,” Kieren said, nudging Jem in the side. “London certainly delivers on the sight-seeing front, doesn’t it?  Been off the train three minutes and we’ve already got Parliament down.”

“And Westminster Abbey,” Simon added, pointing farther down along the street and across a small grass park. “Also the London Eye and the Thames.” He pointed behind them, and surely enough there was the large ferris wheel on the other side of the wide river.  Simon had been to London a few times before, so this was all old hat for him.

“Oooh, can we go up?” Jem asked.

“Probably,” Kieren said. “But let’s go the hotel and drop our stuff off first, yeah?”

Jem looked reluctant but eventually agreed.

Their hotel wasn’t too far off from the station, right in the middle of everything, and Kieren was kind of proud of himself for finding it.  It wasn’t huge, and they could only really afford one room with two beds for all three of them if they wanted to have any sort of spending money, but Jem didn’t seem to mind, so Kieren wasn’t that concerned about.

“Now let’s go!” she said as soon as they’d set their bags down. “To the Eye!”

“You don’t want to make a plan of where to go and what to see first?” Kieren asked, showing her the guidebook he’d borrowed from Shirley Wilson before they’d left Roarton.

“Bring it,” Simon said. “You’ll have time to look over in line.  But I’m getting this gunk off my face before we go anywhere else.”

* * *

 

Clean-faced and clear-eyed, they made their way back towards Parliament and across Westminster bridge, which was possibly even more crowded with people than the Underground had been.  

Simon wasn’t wrong about the lines for the Eye either.  Not only was the ticket line a fifteen minute wait, but the line to actually get on it was at least twice that.  Jem didn’t seem bothered at all, occasionally craning her head back to look up to the top of it before grinning at them like a loon.

“I’ll bet you can see everything from up there,” she said as they watched a group of at least twenty people load onto one of the large capsules. “We’re going to have to stand near the outside rather than the middle, so we can see out the window.  I hope you boys aren’t afraid of using your elbows.”

By the time they got into one of the capsules, which was actually rather nice, with a large wooden bench in the middle for sitting, they’d created a whole plan of attack for the day, including where they’d be eating, which was actually the easiest part since the only person who would eat was Jem, and therefore hers was the only opinion that counted.

They stood bunched close to the glass, watching as their capsule slowly rose up over London.  Simon was snapping pictures like mad, and Jem was oohing and ahhing at everything, as well as pointing out things for Simon to take pictures of.  When they got the peak, Simon turned his camera on them, snapping a couple of pictures before Jem demanded he hand the camera over and took a couple pictures of Kieren and Simon together.  Kieren’s favorite ended up being the one where he’d kissed Simon’s cheek, and they whole city could be seen sprawled out behind them.  After a few shots, Simon reclaimed his camera and Kieren nudged Jem with his elbow.

“So, how you enjoying it so far?” he asked.

“This is amazing, Kier,” she sighed. “Thank you so much.”

“Well, you know,” Kieren said, smiling at her. “I’d do anything for my little-big sister.”

“And I’d do anything for my big-little brother,” she told him before turning to look out the window again, because she wasn’t quite ready to lose all of her “badass” image quite yet.

Kieren stood back and watched them, his two favorite people, break their usual attitudes and be amazed and enamoured by the ride.  While the view was stunning, Kieren was more interested in watching them.  He wasn’t even sure of the last time he’d seen Simon relax like that, or the last time he’d seen Jem smile so much.

Like this she was more like she had been before he’d died, happy and excited about life and everything around her.  This was the Jem he’d longed to see while he was at Norfolk.  But she was also the Jem who she’d become after Kieren had killed himself and hurt her so badly, and after the Rising had forced her to grow up hard and angry, but with a bit less anger clouding the air around her.

He’d failed her in a lot of ways, too caught up in his own depression to see clearly, but he was doing his best to make amends for that.  He’d loved Jem before and he loved her now, and he would continue to love her until there was nothing of him left because she would always be his sister.

When she turned back to grin at him once more, a smile lighting her face and the sun shining over London behind her, he was sure that she would love him just as long, and no thought had ever made him happier.

 


End file.
